


Scent

by teatimestories



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: M/M, Post-Invasion, set a couple years afterward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 10:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teatimestories/pseuds/teatimestories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wall is still half-painted. Faint images of two young men painting the flat surface and laughing and splattering each other with green pigment flicker over the unfinished wall before Jaime blinks, and the memory is gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scent

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of old; I think I have a thing for character death. Hmmm.

Other than all of the belongings that were Bart’s, or were stolen from Jaime by Bart— Jaime absolutely refuses to throw any of these out— it’s the smell that stays the longest.

Sometimes Jaime lies there on their bed and stares at the empty space next to him, sheets pulled over his body and cleanly over the absence by his side. He lies there and he pretends that Bart’s just out late on clean-up duty with Wally, who’s taken up the mantle of the Flash, or that maybe he’s picking up take-out from that Chinese place he knows Jaime loves.

Jaime closes his eyes and he drowns in Bart’s scent, the smell that lingers and stays there and haunts him but eases the raw, angry rip in his heart all the same.

He’d never had really thought that Bart had a scent. The speedster had always simply seemed to smell like whatever he’d just messily scarfed down, which ranged from unhealthy amounts of candy to several servings of Mama Reyes’s pumpkin pie to Jaime’s third attempt at a new recipe. Or sometimes, he’d smell like Iris and Joan’s perfume after helping the two pack Barry’s old things together. There’d be times where Jaime would find darkened splotches of tears on Bart’s chest from holding the two women close, comforting them, and sometimes there would be dry tracks on his face, too, and Jaime would sit on the couch with Bart in his arms until the flashbacks of Barry would fade away, reruns of F.R.I.E.N.D.S dulling into a low murmur of dialogue in the background.

Jaime’d never really thought blood had much of a smell, either, but that was before Bart’s crimson-coated body was in his arms, slowly growing cold and limp, smile faltering and golden-green orbs hiding beneath a pair of paling lids.

Tears, too. A lot of them. Tears and blood and _Bart_.

Jaime sits up, mattress shifting slightly, blanket falling to his waist in a crumpled pile of down and cloth. He closes his eyes, and he can almost feel feather-light kisses being peppered messily across the nape of his neck.

“Good morning,” he calls out, eyes still closed. There is no answer but silence. Not even Khaji Da has a reply. The scarab is staying mercifully quiet.

“It’s good to see you awake,” he continues, brown pools still lidded, and the distinctive, cinnamon-musk spice of Bart seems to grow stronger for just a second, “you lazy-butt. Get up,  _mi rayo_. Professor Winterrs’ll throw a fit if you’re late again.”

He can swear he hears a ghost of a snicker at the mention of Bart’s easily-annoyed English course professor, but he knows it’s his imagination. Or memories, since they’re soaked into the cotton of the bed sheets, the paint in the walls, the floorboards that sometimes creak beneath his feet.

Jaime opens his eyes. The blanket spills in a heap to the floor and he pulls on a clean shirt, padding into the kitchen. He turns the coffee-maker on, taking a thermos from the cupboard. 

He turns, back against the counter of the kitchen as the black coffee-maker begins to pour hot beverage into his thermos. The rays of sun, dancing in shyly from outside the window, splay themselves across Jaime’s skin. He remembers waking up to seeing light in strange patterns on Bart’s features, tripping over the thick flush of lashes that fluttered with every intake of sleeping breath.

The wall is still half-painted. Faint images of two young men painting the flat surface and laughing and splattering each other with green pigment flicker over the unfinished wall before Jaime blinks, and the memory is gone.

He’ll leave the wall like that, partially white and partially green.

The coffee-maker rumbles, a low beep alerting Jaime that it’s finished. His thermos is half full when he turns around, and he caps it with little sound. He slides into a pair of jeans he finds in the living room and tugs on a blue-and-black sweater that he absentmindedly notes is just a tad tight on him.

As he leaves the apartment for work as a dentist’s intern, thermos in one hand and keys in the other, he realizes why, and that it smells of Bart.

Later, during his lunch break, he would feel Bart's silent laughter rippling through his chest. He would feel the sensation of a foot, teasing, running up his calf as he finishes a sandwich at an unpopular cafe. He would feel kisses pressed behind his ear, hands pressed against his back as Bart leaned on his tippy-toes. But now, he jams his keys in the ignition and listens to the sound of the car starting up, and he tries not to choke in Bart's scent.


End file.
